Text Messaging Featured Article

Facebook (News - Alert), the largest social network in the world, is no longer today’s most popular online social media site; that title is now going to Twitter. This microblogging service is now said to be the "most important" social site among teens who are its most active users. It appears that some adolescents and adults are abandoning Facebook over privacy concerns; for example, some are not happy with Facebook’s Android app request to get permission to read users’ text messages (SMS and MMS).

The Facebook Android app, which is now available on Google (News - Alert) play, concerns consumers who are already complaining about its ability to scan SMS text messages automatically; users believe that this feature is intrusive and unnecessary, and that the app should not try to request permission to access this type of information.

According to Facebook Android (News - Alert) engineer Franci Penov, who addressed the concerns of users on Reddit, “The reason Facebook needs access to all [members’] messages rather than just specific ones is that Android's permissions system does not allow for it to do that. [He further explains they] require [the READ_SMS permission] so [Facebook] can automatically intercept login approvals [of] SMS messages for people that have turned on 2-factor authentication for their accounts, or for phone confirmation messages when [users] add a phone number to [their] Facebook account."

Penov adds that the communication between the Facebook app and users’ messages is only local and data isn't sent back to the company's servers; this means data gathered cannot be used to push personalized advertisement to people’s Facebook pages.

Data privacy over the Internet, these days, has become a major concern for people worldwide. Nowadays, users are not simply scared that information collected will be used in promotions and external advertising, but they are also troubled by the possibility that intelligence agencies like the U.S. National Security Agency (News - Alert) (NSA) and its British counterpart, GCHQ, might obtain personal data appearing on the Facebook site as they scan across the Internet looking for leaky apps.

Matters of privacy quickly have become a focus of attention with social media sites. For some time now, Facebook has had several ongoing privacy issues, which have been a frequent source of controversy; this is especially true regarding the company’s latest changes in privacy setting options. Issues like the inability to fully control what others can see on users’ pages or what appears in search results are object of growing complaints. As is in converting their Facebook profiles over to the new Timeline layout.

Facebook believes users don’t need to be uneasy about the safety of their information; Nicky Jackson Colaco, a member of the Facebook Privacy team, believes there’s no breach of user privacy and that many privacy settings haven’t changed much more than simply being moved. There are still settings that disallow other people to see things on their Facebook wall and, just as important, allow the option to accept/decline the information being shared. Yet, there are still talks about Facebook's third-party application programming interface (API) that makes it easy for people to lose their privacy.

CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg (News - Alert) also assured the public that there are no activity and location logging issues and reassures users about privacy on its site as well as through its new Facebook Home service. Those who disagree with his statement and are worried their private messages will be shared or logged always have the option to delete whatever it was collected from right away; it requires, however, the deletion of their Facebook account. Alternatively, there’s AVG CrowdControl; this is a new privacy tool designed to improve one’s experience on Facebook. It can make the member’s Facebook involvement safer by dealing with their privacy issues for them.

Or, perhaps it would be simpler to just forgo these privacy concerns altogether by sticking to SMS text messaging without extraneous apps.